Blues Music

Kids banging on piss pots, chair spokes and life support systems gave the harp player a backbeat. They had lyrics down.

“Blues are a healer.”

“The blues ain’t nothing but a good woman feeling bad.”

“Let’s invent the future,” said one. “The day after tomorrow belongs to me. Know any Little Walter? I love Juke.”

“Sure do,” said the player. “Let’s have a look see at our repertoire. How about some Sonny Boy? His real name was Chester Burnett, born in Mississippi, down in the Delta. Have you heard Help Me? It’s a classic. He sang, ‘If you don’t help me I’m going to have find me somebody else.’ He had the blues with a feeling. Speaking of healers, my mom does vision quests. Helps people see their way through personal dark slime and muck. She makes womb lodges. People go in there. Can you imagine, going back into the womb? Dark and spooky floating in wet stuff. You can’t see a thing. It’s scary and cool. She says it allows people to process old grief and memories. She calls it regressing. It takes a lot out of her.”

“It’s like entering a cave,” said Tran. “I heard about amazing Paleolithic paintings in Benaojan, Spain near Ronda. They are really old stone stories of 26,000-year old bison, archers, deer, fish traps and sex stuff. I met a wandering ghostwriter named Omar in Morocco after 9/11 and…”

“Probably metaphorical,” said an abstract kid. “They used their imagination and daily struggle to survive. They created internal and external dream images and stories. It’s all about survival, meaning and metaphor. A cave. A womb. Birth. Life. Death. Transformation.”

“Yeah, they painted their experiences. They weren’t dreams silly. They were real. They were hunters-gathers like us. They shared visions and story-truth with family, clan and tribe. They created honest magical creation stories. They expanded the known and unknown in their universe.”

“Oh yeah?” said a skeptic. “I mean where’s the scientific proof? Scientists will never reconcile the two abstract theories into a unified field theory of the universe, matter, anti-matter and evolutionary hypothesis with Time & Being & Nothingness.”

“I heard scientists dated them.”

“When you get that old no one will date you.”

Blues harp music echoed through the ward. “Who wrote that?” said one.

“Willie Dixon. He wrote some great music. Everybody recorded his tunes. Stones, Muddy Waters, you name it. The guys at Chess Records jerked him around big time. Talk about paying your dues.”

“If you want to play you have to pay.”

“Did he mate at Chess or was he a figure of speech like a metaphor?” said a linguistic kid. “Sound check.”

“He was a lyricist,” said the blues player, “and he also played the bass.”

“I know the words but forgot the music.”

“Music is the fuel,” said harp dude.

ART